Browsing by Author "Colomo, Carlota Alejandre"
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- Biological agents risk assessment: how to close the gap between science, policy making and occupational health and safety practice?Publication . Colomo, Carlota Alejandre; Heussen, Henri; Van der Haar, Rudolf; Marchand, Geneviève; Madsen, Anne Mette; Viegas, CarlaWithin the Occupational Hygiene community, the risk assessment due to exposure to biological agents has received little attention compared to chemical agents. However, the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of raising awareness and prioritizing the prevention of work-related health effects caused by biological agents. However, tools for inventorying hazards, performing risk assessments, implementing control measures, and anchoring the results are rare. With the COVID-19 pandemic in mind, biological agents are often only referred to as infectious diseases. However, both infectious and non-infectious microorganisms may cause health effects. Workers in various sectors, such as healthcare and veterinary services, agriculture, waste, and wastewater management, and laboratories may be exposed through aerosols or contact with infected persons or materials that are contaminated by microorganisms. Furthermore, the sensitizing and toxic effects of biological agents are not considered when they are classified into biological agent risk groups. The sensitizing biological agents include fungi and certain bacteria (including thermophile actinomycetes). Toxic effects can be caused by metabolic products and cellular constituents of biological agents. Increased focus on biological exposures and health effects is therefore needed in order to improve the risk assessment for biological agents. The evaluation of workplace bioaerosol exposure risk is complex, considering the great diversity of bioaerosols and their effects, the limitations of the measurement methods available, and the lack of occupational exposure limits. In this symposium we present the concept of a tiered biological agents risk assessment, starting with a qualitative and ending with a quantitative approach.
- Functional requirements to develop a new risk assessment model for exposure to biological agentsPublication . Colomo, Carlota Alejandre; Marchand, Geneviève; van der Haar, Rudolf; Bercero Antiller, Cristina; Viegas, Carla; Houba, Remko; Zilaout, Hicham; Heussen, HenriWithin Occupational Risk Prevention, the assessment of risks due to exposure to biological agents has received little attention compared to risks such as those arising from chemicals. This was the case until the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of health effects related to exposure to biological agents in the work environment. However, the tools for hazard inventory, risk assessment, and implementation of control measures for biological agents are scarce. There are many reasons that make it challenging for OHS professionals to assess the exposure to biological agents such as, little knowledge of the biological agents potentially present in the different economic activities, their effects on health, the lack of standardized methods for quantitative sampling or the lack of reference values available for most biological agents. Different qualitative risk assessment tools for biological agents have been developed over the last decades. Some examples are the Simplified Evaluation of the INSST (Spain), the Biogaval-Neo of the INVASSAT (Spain), the Bioaerosol Tool of the IRSST (Canada) or the RIE Method of the NKAL (The Netherlands). These tools differ from each other in terms of their scope and the parameters used to determine risk and were compared in order to better understand their limitations and applicability. After the comparison was carried out some additional specific parameters have been proposed as essential for the development of this new model. The proposed improvements could be implemented in the development of a new qualitative biological risk assessment model in the Stoffenmanager® tool.